Probably not as horrible as you think, but definitely not problem-free. A massive part of why Lynn is with Alec in the first place is because he's a bad person. She's not surprised he committed yet another sexual crime. Because she's not in love with him the way she was with Cy and their relationship is a lot more casual, the emotional impact his actions have on her is a lot less, and easier to dismiss. It also helps that she knows that Isabelle isn't in Alec's life anymore and that Lynn is disinterested in punishing Alec after the fact.

Still, Lynn would be disappointed in herself for once again feeling this attraction towards an awful man, even if she does ultimately continue the relationship because she can't find a reason to stop more powerful than her own horniness. I could see it being something that comes up in her mind during her spates of self-loathing.

Alec would be more unsettled and upset by Lynn finding out. He treasures his memories of being with Isabelle and would find exposure both violating and a relief. Although he's glad Lynn takes it...relatively well so he doesn't have to kill her, he's left with a sort of rage that she knows about something so private and intimate, but also takes some comfort in someone knowing after years of secrecy.

As for how it happens, it's actually fairly likely that in all the homemade porn Alec and Lynn watch together, one day he simply forgets that he left an Isabelle tape in the VCR. Lynn would recognize Isabelle from pictures she's seen before in a family context.

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by red flags? The relationship between Isabelle and Cy is a remarkably healthy one! If you're talking about my recent post about how Isabelle's type is essentially just really toxic individuals, Cy is honestly a deviation from her type, at least in how he treats her. They bond as friends before they're D/s. The core of that platonic bond is (in my opinion, Null's might be different) the way they're both sort of alien to most of the people around them, vulnerable in some ways but closed-off in others. Isabelle doesn't find out about Cy's past crimes until well into their relationship.

The ways in which Isabelle's hypothetical Bertrand trauma would vary from her canonical/Nullverse Alec trauma would give Isabelle more initial anxiety about abandonment and attachment, I think. Having been neglected by Bertrand, she would probably be clingier with Cy, and would go out of her way more to please him. This is also a product of how her sexual behavior would change—Isabelle typically shows promiscuous behavior because she's trying to fill the void Alec leaves, but I think in this case she would do it more to get attention and affection.

However, I also think that Isabelle's increased independence due to Bertrand not suppressing her the way Alec did would mean that she moves on from that phase relatively quickly. She would have an easier time standing on her own and would depend on Cy less for stability once she's internalized that he likes her and isn't going to withdraw from her. Isabelle would also be less "baby mode" and soft overall, so the tone of their relationship would probably be different. She'd need less caretaking of a cg/lg sort and more emotional reassurance.

I've talked a little bit about it Isabelle was a cis boy before here (https://neospring.org/+r/f3ed44f87b) but I'll happily talk about it more! Both cis and trans this time.

I ultimately think that Isabelle's "boy personality" already exists when her genderfluidity shifts boywards. The traits of his that become more prominent then—competitiveness, protectiveness, violence, a desire for control—are born of having Alec for a male role model. If Isabelle was a boy all the time, whether cis or trans, I think he would be ashamed of his submissive desires the way Isabelle is ashamed of her dominant desires by default.

However, he would definitely still have them. To reconcile the desires he would be bratty and manipulative with his male doms, but wouldn't really enjoy it as much as he would total submission, which he would find with Cy (assuming Cy is down to dominate a man other than Eden).

In general boy!Isabelle is more in touch with the anger and aggression that our usual nb!Isabelle already possess, and the ideals he tries to live up to are different. Basically every trait of Isabelle's that is societally seen as "masculine" he leans into, while leaning away from things seen as feminine, but the fundamental personality is the same.

While Eden can be mean and has seniority, so to speak, he's still very much Cy's sub and that shows in the dynamic. He's an extension of Cy and an accessory to him; what he does is what he's allowed to do. He likes hurting Isabelle and has a particular thing for choking her, but Cy keeps him in line and he's still denied certain privileges like orgasms (when Cy says so) and getting to fuck Isabelle anally. From time to time she's also allowed to put on a strapon and peg him. Since they're both Cy's submissives, their dynamic is fluid in that how exactly it works depends on what will get Cy off on a given day.

Gender identity? That would be a series of brief conversations, as Isabelle honestly doesn't know much about it herself when she meets Cy. Growing up in a relatively conservative environment, Isabelle didn't get a lot of education on genderqueer identities. Being in the more progressive space the campus provides lets her explore more, wear pronoun badges at events, make queer friends, etc, but she still has a lot of hangups herself.

Cy discovering that she sometimes is a boy would be a partial accident related to something like him finding her packer or other boymoding tools. Isabelle would be comfortable enough to tell him that she likes a range of gender expression, and depending on how much she's figured out by then, would probably go on to elaborate a little on how she's genderfluid without using that exact word. Meanwhile Cy would decide early on in the conversation that he's just gonna indulge her regardless without thinking too hard about it or really trying to understand. He can take good care of his subs without understanding the why behind every what.

Isabelle first meets Lynn in rather humiliating circumstances, and the humiliation is deepened when "Lynn" is a man. This puts a distance between them that Eden never really cares to mend. There's a lack of feminine solidarity between them like there is when Eden is Lynn (which is a funny thing to say since Lynn enables Cy so much and Isabelle's not even really a woman, but still) that makes for more distance.

However, Isabelle's own trauma and general nonthreateningness enables Eden to open up to her a bit and share things in one instance that he wouldn't really share with others. It's not enough to form the kind of bond that Isabelle has with Lynn in Nullverse canon, though. When they do have threeway sex with Cy, he's less inclined to go easy on her than Cy is, which contributes to Isabelle's sort of morbid interest in him. She won't pursue it if she's in a good headspace, though.

As for twin!Eden, I don't really know! That AU is new enough that when I discussed it with Null there wasn't enough groundwork to go on. But honestly, I would expect that they'd be pretty distant. Cy likes to keep a small social circle too, so there's also a chance that if he already had two submissives he wouldn't go for a third. Who knows, though? Not me or Null at the moment, that's for sure.

That would be a dealbreaker for her. Not morally, very little is a dealbreaker for Isabelle morally, but because knowing Cy has (or even had) that capacity for violence would scare her too much for her to be able to keep a relationship with him going. Isabelle would probably play nice for a little while while she tries to decide what to do, and then she'd ghost him and start taking strict measures to avoid seeing him around campus.

A dominant older man who's willing to let her take out her sadistic, violent urges on him while still putting her in her place? Sign her up!

No worries! Welcome to my Neospring. I've already answered the question here (https://neospring.org/+r/ea04779465) and here (https://neospring.org/+r/0e43226377).

traumaswap!Lynn fails the vibe check. Isabelle finds her a little too selfish and careless with Cy, although she doesn't know the past extent, and maintains a polite distance.

Isabelle and traumaswap!Cy would have a different bond than Isabelle and canon!Cy mostly because of the ways his trauma gives them more in common and the way it affects his sexuality. traumaswap!Cy is less sadistic and dominant than canon!Cy, so when he and Isabelle do kink together it tends to be less of an actual D/s dynamic and more two friends finding catharsis and release. Neither of them are strictly Dominant or submissive towards each other, but they'd find a kind of natural ebb and flow of who inflicts pain and who endures it depending on what they're feeling. Sometimes Isabelle slices into him, sometimes Cy puts out cigarettes on her, they've got a vibe going.

Ultimately, though, they'd just be friends with strange benefits. I think Isabelle and Cy both keep sex and love very much detached from each other, and while Isabelle might crush on Cy a little here and there, she wouldn't want to turn the relationship into a romantic one. She'd see him as a rare oasis of understanding and she wouldn't want to do anything to fuck that up or complicate it. Why mess with a good thing, especially if the good thing involves getting to work out both sides of her sadomasochism?

Now and then! Not just a special occasion thing, but not as often as Isabelle has sex with just Cy. They do have sexual encounters without him, though, especially if Cy is distantly involved—if, for example, Isabelle is spending the day at the house in bondage but Cy won't be there the whole time and Lynn is left in charge of her. Things like that.

Null and I have done exactly 0 building for what Isabelle would have going on in Baby AU, but I personally kinda think Olivia being present would mean that Isabelle is less present in Cy's life, if they still have an affair at all. I don't think Cy and Lynn would especially want to explain to their daughter what the dynamic is there, and as she gets older it would be unavoidable, so probably there would be little to no interaction.

Isabelle would be fine with this, and Cy having a child wouldn't really affect how she feels about him. She's fucked married men who have children before.

Isabelle and Cy's sex life kind of changes with the seasons due to both the academic schedule and Isabelle's physical responses to the weather changing. Because school is busier before winter break and because the cold really exacerbates the pain she experiences from old injuries, she and Cy tend to taper off during finals season, and then the sex they have over Christmas break is more plentiful but more vanilla. It's not until the weather warms up and school eases that Cy finally starts delivering on all of Isabelle's begging for pain. They get the majority of their hardcore kinky fucking done over summer break and are more laidback the rest of the time. Of course, Lynn is always and forever Cy's main squeeze, so Isabelle has to get her fuck appointments in around Lynn's schedule.

As for aftercare, Isabelle is a cuddler! Cy typically holds her until she comes down emotionally, then gives her a shower and bundles her up for Yet More Cuddling and restorative things like water, juice, snacks, etc. Isabelle likes being sort of littlespace-adjacent for aftercare sometimes, so Cy has learned to indulge her with particular childhood movies and stuffed animals. Isabelle craves affection after sex, and he doesn't mind offering that.

If you're talking about in the Nullverse, very much not. That's how Isabelle escapes. Alec tells Viola that he wants her to act publicly as the mother of the child Isabelle is carrying to avoid scandal, and she decides she's had enough and gets the fuck out of there with Isabelle. Then they go to the US, which is where Isabelle enrolls in college and meets Cy.

Lots of recipes (primarily baking), lots of arts and crafts projects, TONS of music (classical, jazz/blues, rock/metal), porn and things that are not porn that she masturbates to anyway like horror movie scenes and disaster footage, apps for helping manage her memory issues. Oh, and animal/nature stuff. She loves both cute and weird things in nature.

I've talked a bit here (https://neospring.org/+r/0e43226377) about Isabelle learning about Cy's past actions, and how she weighs it morally, but since you compare it to Alec's actions I'm going to talk about how she feels about that!

For Isabelle, a large part of the horror of Alec's actions came from the violence, the way he robbed her of control and agency, the brainwashing, the cruelty to others...all this extreme, intensive, horrific stuff that Cy just never enacted on his students. Isabelle doesn't think that what he did to his students was okay, but because it wasn't violent, she can't really bring herself to care (love reminding people that Isabelle is not really a good person) especially because it was in the past, so while she finds it upsetting at first she ultimately lets it go.

I'm guessing that because this is CyLynn you're not so much talking about a pre-negotiated CNC scene and more about how Cy is with Lynn, where it's more like actual rape. In that case Isabelle would be...devastated, to say the absolute fucking least. The sense of total betrayal and violation would activate a lot of her old thought patterns and in the ensuing meltdown she'd blame herself for it and hate herself for repeatedly attracting predators, which flows into even more self destructive behavior. I do think she would distance herself from Cy completely, but that would probably only lead to her looking for another sadist...preferably a more blatantly abusive one so at least this time she'll see it coming.

Thank you very much! And yes, it's....very, very on brand, unfortunately. Good thing it's not canon! Although I did build a son/brother character for Isabelle for an AU where Alec doesn't make her get an abortion the first time he gets her pregnant. (Distinct from nullverse.)

He knows. Fortunately for him, inbreeding is a stacking effect, so the results probably wouldn't be too severe...But regardless, in this AU he mostly wanted it as a means of controlling Isabelle and exerting more power over the family. Nothing is ever enough for this guy. With age, Isabelle was getting more independent, so he wanted to sort of babytrap her. Backfired for sure. He didn't count on Viola actually being willing to help.

No worries! Yes, their relationship improves, but doesn't start seeing major progress until Isabelle is somewhere in her thirties; Yes! Viola gets THERAPY, even. What a concept! She comes to realize that Alec was nothing but an abusive manipulator, and how very badly she fucked up with Isabelle; Isabelle was in agreement that she needed to leave, because she knew that there was no end to the ways Alec would subject her body to his whims and that he would inevitably end up abusing any child she had with him as well. She grieved it and remains fucked up about losing him for a very long time, but gradually comes to understand how deeply wrong their dynamic was. Thank you very much for the questions!

Isabelle got pregnant with Alec's child, and Alec decided he wanted her to carry the baby to term and that they would raise it as if it was Viola's. This was too far for Viola, both because it was close to home with her own pregnancy trauma and because of how directly it involved her and how much it would demand her covering for Alec, so Viola took her money and Isabelle and dipped for the US, where she got Isabelle an abortion and some temporary housing. From there she got her into the uni where Cy teaches, and here we are!

Sure! So the main difference is that the nullverse version is designed to sort of pipeline Isabelle over to the Foresters, so she leaves Alec younger and goes to the US instead of staying in England. In canon she doesn't leave until her early twenties on her own and goes to London; in nullverse she leaves at eighteen with Viola's help and goes to the Midwest, where Viola pays for her education. Nullverse canon also has a version of Alec who, while still English aristocracy, is not a crime lord, just to make the escape easier.

Twentyish! Probably just turned twenty. She's a few semesters into college when she meets him, and she started that at nineteen.